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We Have A New BO Maladministration SCANDAL – And It’s The IRS

Well, we got ourselves another BO Maladministration Scandal. This time the venue is the IRS. It seems, no, they searched for new Tax Exempt Groups and looked for “Patriots” and other key words and HARRASSED them for information the IRS is NOT suppose to ask for. It was plain law breaking INTIMIDATION. Today they said “They were sorry” for doing this. Let’s hope real soon they say “I’m Guilty, Your Honor” and go to jail.

IRS apologizes for targeting tea party groups

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER AP — May. 10 6:14 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was “inappropriate” targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.

IRS agents singled out dozens of organizations for additional reviews because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their exemption applications, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups. In some cases, groups were asked for lists of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.

The agency — led at the time by a Bush administration appointee — blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware. But that wasn’t good enough for Republicans in Congress, who are conducting several investigations and asked for more.

It doesn’t matter who appointed the IRS officials, under their leadership the agency is guilty of an organized campaign of illegally targeting Obama’s political opponents (specifically groups with names including TEA Party or Patriot) for bureaucratic harassment and for highly intrusive demands for protected lists of financial contributors.

It’s a high crime against the people’s right to open and fair elections for a sitting president to use the federal government’s agencies under his control, especially the IRS, to attack or harass political opponents. Such corrosive forms of malfeasance in office are strictly forbidden in democratic republics because unchecked they lead directly to patterns of official coercion characteristic of dictatorships.

All I’m hearing now with this IRS Scandal (and it may grow) and Benghazi is it was the work of some low life flunkies. We’re being told the Top Brass didn’t know what was going on. I say that analysis of the top leadership was out of the loop is 100% Pure Unadultrated Bovine Feces. The low lifes are trying to sell the Chiefs didn’t know.

I’m wondering how close this is to Watergate. Essentially operatives from the DNC using the IRS to probe the donors and associates and families of the opposition to get information. Afterall, is not that what Nixon’s operatives did to the DNC. In IRS-Gate, you have a covert break-in of sorts, a cover-up, a low-life in IRS says OOOOPPS, and the Maladminstration goes, ah, it was nothing, take the apology and move on.

Republicans said Sunday that the Internal Revenue Service’s heightened scrutiny of conservative political groups was “chilling” and further eroded public trust in government.

Lawmakers said President Barack Obama personally should apologize for targeting tea party organizations and they challenged the tax agency’s blaming of low-level workers.

“I just don’t buy that this was a couple of rogue IRS employees,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. “After all, groups with ‘progressive’ in their names were not targeted similarly.”

If it were just a small number of employees, she said, “then you would think that the high-level IRS supervisors would have rushed to make this public, fired the employees involved, apologized to the American people and informed Congress. None of that happened in a timely way.”

The IRS said Friday that it was sorry for what it called the “inappropriate” targeting of the conservative groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. The agency blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware.

At various points over the past two years, Internal Revenue Service officials targeted nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution, according to documents in an audit conducted by the agency’s inspector general.

The documents, obtained by The Washington Post from a congressional aide with knowledge of the findings, show that on June 29, 2011, IRS staffers held a briefing with senior agency official Lois G. Lerner in which they described giving special attention to instances where “statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run.” Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the agency, raised objections and the agency revised its criteria a week later.

From the Articles of Impeachment against Richard Nixon, President of the United States, Adopted 28-10 — including by six Republicans — by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives, at 7.07pm on Saturday, 27th July, 1974, in Room 2141 of the Rayburn Office Building, Washington D.C.:

Article 2

Using the powers of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in disregard of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purposed of these agencies.

This conduct has included one or more of the following:

He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.

He misused the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service, and other executive personnel, in violation or disregard of the constitutional rights of citizens, by directing or authorizing such agencies or personnel to conduct or continue electronic surveillance or other investigations for purposes unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office; he did direct, authorize, or permit the use of information obtained thereby for purposes unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office; and he did direct the concealment of certain records made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of electronic surveillance.

We have been told that these were the acts of rogue, low-level Infernal Revenue Service employees, but IRS senior leadership knew about this since 2011 at the latest.

Two members of the House Judiciary Committee who voted for the Articles of Impeachment, Charles Rangel of New York and John Conyers of Michigan, are still in the House of Representatives; Mr Conyers is currently the Democratic ranking member of that committee, and would have to vote on any Articles of Impeachment that the Republicans brought against President Obama on these things. (Mr Rangel is no longer on the Judiciary Committee.) Since he believed that these actions, when alleged against President Nixon, warranted impeachment and removal, shouldn’t we expect that he would believe that the same conduct, alleged against President Obama, would similarly merit impeachment?

The Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of conservative groups went beyond those with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names—as the agency admitted Friday—to also include ones worried about government spending, debt or taxes, and even ones that lobbied to “make America a better place to live,” according to new details of a government probe.

The investigation also revealed that a high-ranking IRS official knew as early as mid-2011 that conservative groups were being inappropriately targeted—nearly a year before then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told a congressional committee the agency wasn’t targeting conservative groups.

The new disclosures are likely to inflame a widening controversy over IRS handling of dozens of applications by tea-party, patriot and other conservative groups for tax-exempt status.

The details emerged from disclosures to congressional investigators by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The findings, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, don’t make clear who came up with the idea to give extra scrutiny to the conservative groups.

Benghazi is a bigger scandal because The President and the Secretary of State perverted the authority of their high offices to turn their backs on brave Americans fighting for their lives, to refuse to allow rescue operations to come to their aid, and then to cover up their despicable crimes by concocting a string of blatant lies, jailing a scapegoat, stonewalling Congressional investigations, holding survivors in isolation to keep them from providing firsthand accounts, and for threatening witnesses with retaliation to keep the criminal conspiracy hidden from the public they were elected to serve faithfully.

As serious as the IRS scandal is, and as many elements of malfeasance in office that it shares with Benghazi, it fails to rise to the same level because it lacks blood of American patriots spilled on foreign soil, although the despicable lies to their grieving parents from the lips of their betrayers.

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